70 years after World War II, there are 78,000 U.S servicemen still missing in action. According to Ken Moore, founder of Moore’s Marauders, a nonprofit MIA search and recovery organization, the U.S government maintains there are about 35,000 MIA remains that are still recoverable. Moore, whose own uncle was MIA during World War II, considers it a personal mission to recover the servicemen who dedicated their lives to the cause of freedom. The search and recovery service is provided to veterans’ families free of charge, and Moore’s world class team consists of former military commanders, doctors, scientists, pilots and experts in everything from agriculture to explosives.
Finding someone who has been missing for 70 years isn’t easy, especially if you don’t really know where to start. Before contacting the Marauders, I decided to conduct my own investigation and gather as much information as possible. With a little internet sleuthing, I discovered Terrell was listed as a POW on the island of Java in Indonesia. The trail ended there. Prisoner camps corresponded to numbers denoting camp locations throughout Java, but there was no number next to Terrell’s name. Next, I contacted the National Personnel Records Center. Located in St. Louis, Missouri, the center is the repository of millions of military personnel records from the 20th century. The records indicated that Terrell’s status was changed from MIA to presumed dead after the war. No further information was noted or included. Another dead end.
Moore’s personal journey to piece together what happened to his uncle Billy during World War Two spanned 30 years and multiple continents. In 1999, Moore and his group recovered wreckage from his uncle’s B-29 bomber, The Life of Riley, off the coast of the Mariana Islands. Today, the team is busy fundraising and conducting research trips around the world to piece together the stories of MIA’s. Some of the areas of focus include the Tinian Islands, from which the Enola Gay flew, parts of China where Japanese labor camps existed and the areas surrounding the 100 mile Bataan Death March.
When I contacted Moore, he mentioned that time was of the essence in finding MIA’s. With each passing day, the hope of collaborating research theories with eye witness accounts diminishes a little more. The Marauders network is vast, especially in the Pacific Islands, and after emailing over copies of documents and photographs I had of Terrell, my search request entered the queue.
Then I made one last attempt to find some answers at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Anyone with a picture I.D and a defined research topic can access the National Archives’ billions of original documents. It is powerful and a bit frightening to hold the original (the National Archives doesn’t make copies) record of history in one’s own hands. After requesting the deck logs of the ship Terrell was stationed on, I made a discovery that held the key to the mystery. Deck logs, which contain records of ship activity, are amazingly thorough. Terrell had been sick on and off for several months and was transferred to a Dutch military hospital in Western Java in February 1941. The USS John D. Edwards, the ship Terrell was stationed on, remained docked in Java until The Battle of The Java Sea in late February. Deck logs show the ship made a stealthy escape to Australia on February 28th, 1941. The next day, Japanese forces invaded the island of Java.
The story ends here, or perhaps this is where it really begins. What happened on that island? Records show it took Japanese forces two days to reach the area where the Dutch hospital was located. Well before then Charles, who wasn’t mortally ill or wounded, would have realized that his ship had left without him. Did he attempt to escape to the mountains only to find Japanese sympathizers? Did he stay and fight? POW camps on the island were emptied, and prisoners endured the Bataan Death March to Japanese work camps, but there are no records of what happened to the servicemen in the hospital.
My family has one letter written by Terrell during his military service. In it, he describes the beauty of the Philippines and the excitement of visiting exotic locales. For a poor Alabama boy, the military was the greatest escape. Steady pay and three meals a day was far better than most were getting at home. In fact, one of the top reasons young men from Alabama failed their military physicals was weight requirements. They didn’t weigh enough, the result of years of malnourishment. As Moore said, time is the enemy here. Each day that passes, the remaining veterans from World War II, those who can recall the battles and the horrors, the history, are slipping away. Maybe my family and I will never know what happened to Terrell. Maybe I’m not supposed to know. But that won’t stop me from looking.
Moore’s personal journey to piece together what happened to his uncle Billy during World War Two spanned 30 years and multiple continents. In 1999, Moore and his group recovered wreckage from his uncle’s B-29 bomber, The Life of Riley, off the coast of the Mariana Islands. Today, the team is busy fundraising and conducting research trips around the world to piece together the stories of MIA’s. Some of the areas of focus include the Tinian Islands, from which the Enola Gay flew, parts of China where Japanese labor camps existed and the areas surrounding the 100 mile Bataan Death March.
When I contacted Moore, he mentioned that time was of the essence in finding MIA’s. With each passing day, the hope of collaborating research theories with eye witness accounts diminishes a little more. The Marauders network is vast, especially in the Pacific Islands, and after emailing over copies of documents and photographs I had of Terrell, my search request entered the queue.
Then I made one last attempt to find some answers at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Anyone with a picture I.D and a defined research topic can access the National Archives’ billions of original documents. It is powerful and a bit frightening to hold the original (the National Archives doesn’t make copies) record of history in one’s own hands. After requesting the deck logs of the ship Terrell was stationed on, I made a discovery that held the key to the mystery. Deck logs, which contain records of ship activity, are amazingly thorough. Terrell had been sick on and off for several months and was transferred to a Dutch military hospital in Western Java in February 1941. The USS John D. Edwards, the ship Terrell was stationed on, remained docked in Java until The Battle of The Java Sea in late February. Deck logs show the ship made a stealthy escape to Australia on February 28th, 1941. The next day, Japanese forces invaded the island of Java.
The story ends here, or perhaps this is where it really begins. What happened on that island? Records show it took Japanese forces two days to reach the area where the Dutch hospital was located. Well before then Charles, who wasn’t mortally ill or wounded, would have realized that his ship had left without him. Did he attempt to escape to the mountains only to find Japanese sympathizers? Did he stay and fight? POW camps on the island were emptied, and prisoners endured the Bataan Death March to Japanese work camps, but there are no records of what happened to the servicemen in the hospital.
My family has one letter written by Terrell during his military service. In it, he describes the beauty of the Philippines and the excitement of visiting exotic locales. For a poor Alabama boy, the military was the greatest escape. Steady pay and three meals a day was far better than most were getting at home. In fact, one of the top reasons young men from Alabama failed their military physicals was weight requirements. They didn’t weigh enough, the result of years of malnourishment. As Moore said, time is the enemy here. Each day that passes, the remaining veterans from World War II, those who can recall the battles and the horrors, the history, are slipping away. Maybe my family and I will never know what happened to Terrell. Maybe I’m not supposed to know. But that won’t stop me from looking.
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